Birthday Parties Russian Style

I've been to two birthday parties in the past two days. So you're probably thinking "A Russian birthday party? That's got to involve heaps of vodka and a bear!"* Well you'd be wrong.

The first birthday celebration was for my teacher, and it was a nice mid afternoon gathering at the American House. A group of us sat in the kitchen and had a bit of champagne and the head of the program here (Galina Petrovna) gave a very sweet toast about how lovely Nelli is. There were a bunch of snacks too- grapes, wafer cookies, some kind of marshmallow brick thing that was creme brulee flavored and probably has given me diabetes from how sweet it was, cherries (Suzdal, the neighboring town is famous for its cherries) and various chocolates. We sat around chatting for quite a while. It was lovely. I wish I'd brought my camera with me so I could have taken pictures of the various treats.

Yesterday my roommate got an invitation to go to a birthday party for a guy named Yura, and she invited me along with her. I should start by saying that neither my roommate nor I knew the birthday boy. That kind of debunks the whole "Russians don't talk to strangers." myth, doesn't it? Maybe it's the smallness of Vladimir, but I'm so impressed by how friendly & outgoing everyone has been so far. Yura didn't seem fazed that two random American girls were at his party. He put the bowling alley menu in front of us, and said, "Have a drink. My treat."

Anyway, the birthday party was at a bowling alley! We got there and donned Russian bowling shoes (they come with disposable socks) and had a crack at bowling. There were six of us at the party, so we had two teams of three and bowled for a couple of hours. This was also pretty tame drinking wise-three of the people drank alcohol free mojitos, one person had a glass of white wine, my roommate had a beer and I had an orange soda.

After we got tired of bowling we decided to go for a walk. Actually, I got pressured into going for a walk because I thought perhaps I should go home and do my homework for the evening. I was talked out of this plan by some of the Russian girls who insisted they would help me translate the story I had to read. This lead to me learning the Russian word for "To seduce." or as the Russian girls told me "How to get a man to have the sex with you." See? I'm learning things here.

Our walk led us to Mister Hamburger where we got ice cream and then to Pushkin Park where we found another group of Americans who are here studying with the Critical Language Scholarship program. They were there with a few of their Russian hosts slacklining. I somehow got talked into it, so the picture above is of me attempting it for the first time.

The night ended fairly early around 9:45 or so, and in true Russian host mom fashion there was a big bowl of borscht waiting for us.

*Okay, you're probably only thinking it involves a bear if you saw the Russian film version of War & Peace from a while ago. Otherwise, you probably weren't thinking it involved a bear, but from now on you will.

A Kopeck Saved is a Kopeck Earned

Even though it's a bit of a vulgar subject to talk about in polite company, I'm going to talk about money. I was lucky enough to receive a travel fellowship from the University of Virginia to pay for this trip. After paying for the program costs, the plane ticket, the visa processing fee and all of the other little fees that come along with trying to get to Russia, it doesn't leave me very much to live on while here.

So I decided to turn this into a challenge. My goal is to live on $10 a day, which is just about 300 rubles.*

The Thrifty Challenge, I'm sad to report, has not actually been that much of a challenge. I already have a surplus of $23! As an American living in Vladimir, I'm able to live fairly cheaply. This is a sharp contrast against when I studied in Moscow and St. Petersburg where I practically bled green because everything was so expensive. To give you an idea of the lifestyle difference between here & Moscow, my roommate went to Moscow a few weeks ago to visit friends. They wanted to go out to a new club & called to reserve a table. It was $2,000 (yes, American dollars) per person to get a table there. On Sunday when we wanted to reserve a table at the local place to watch the World Cup it was 500 rubles per person ($16.67), but we still went somewhere else that was free.

I guess I should first start out by saying that I'm able to cheat a little bit because my program fees cover two meals a day prepared by my host mom. My host mom feels I'm too skinny (or as she put it "You look like a French girl, you need fat on your hips.") so she feeds me such a large breakfast that there's no way I can even think about eating a big lunch. Then comes an even bigger dinner, but I'll write more about Russian food later. It would certainly be a little bit harder to stick to $10 a day if I had to buy lunch or dinner for myself every day.

So how do I spend my money? Here have been a few of my purchases over the past six days:

Bottle of carbonated water: 19 rubles ( 63 cents)
Daily bus ticket to class & home: 10 rubles each way ( 33 cents)
Notebook for class: 18 rubles (60 cents)
Half Liter of Efis Beer during World Cup: 100 rubles ($3.33) x 2
Full liter of mead purchased in Suzdal b/c they're famous for mead: 200 rubles ($6)
Pickle purchased on the street in Suzdal: 7 rubles (23 cents)
Movie ticket: 190 rubles ($6.33)
Taxi anywhere in Vladimir to the apartment: 100 rubles, but split between me & roommate when we go out since the buses stop running at 10pm
($1.67)

So my daily expenses are pretty close to nil. Some days when I have a lot of reading to do for class & cannot go out at night, my only expense is my roundtrip on the bus. I haven't gone to any museums or exhibitions yet so that'll take away some of my funds, but museums here are just a few rubles for students as well.

I realize that once I get to Moscow for my week there everything I've saved up will quickly be depleted, but I'm enjoying the thriftiness for now.

*the $10 doesn't include all the books I'm going to buy in Moscow & presents for other people. As a dedicated book nerd, I've put aside money especially for that.

Why I'm Sleeping on a Chair

This is a picture of my bedroom here in Vladimir, Russia. I know what you're thinking. That's not a bedroom, it's a living room, isn't it? Wait, is one of those chairs folded out to make a bed? Doesn't that feel oddly like sleeping in a very tight coffin so that in the middle of the night you wake up screaming because for a split second you think you've been put in a coffin?

The answer to all of those question is: yes. Yes, I am sleeping in someone's living room. Yes, that is a fold out arm chair. And yes it does feel like I'm sleeping in a coffin which I've now named Coffin-A-Go-Go (I started calling it Baby Coffin, but that's too morbid even for me).

So this is the story of how I learned that they even make fold out arm chairs:

A week or so ago my contact at the American House in Vladimir, Russia emailed me a questionnaire about what type of host mom I would like to have. The questions were pretty standard.

1. Did I have a smoking preference? Yes, I'd prefer a non smoker since smoking is vile.
2. Did I have any allergies? Mangoes (although they're hardly part of the standard Russian cuisine) and preservatives as in MSG (preservatif in Russian means condoms. Had to clarify because it would otherwise lead to an uncomfortable conversation about why Americans cook with condoms*).
3. Did I have any preferences as to what type of host mom I'd like? No, I'm pretty easy going on host moms. My last host mom in St. Petersburg was a prostitute. So long as she doesn't pimp me out, I'm pretty easy going about who I live with (My St. Petes host mom thankfully did not pimp me out, and even told one of her gentleman callers to leave me alone when he asked what the girl in the next room did. Infinitely grateful for that.)

A few days later my contact in Vladimir sent me an email saying she had the perfect host mom for me, but would I mind it if there was another American girl staying there too? I responded that no I didn't mind so long as we each had our own room. My contact wrote back that we'd each have our own room. No problem.

Do you see the mistake I made in my question?

Yeah, I asked if I'd have my own room. I didn't say bedroom. Oops.

So you can imagine my surprise as my host mom deposited me in the living room and showed me how to work Coffin-A-Go-Go. I was sleep deprived and I think I may have squawked a little bit. It seemed squawk worthy at the time. Once I had a shower, I realized there was pretty much nothing I could do about the situation at that time, so I'd have to give sleeping like the Crypt Keeper a shot for the time being.

To my surprise, Coffin-A-Go-Go is pretty comfortable considering that like a coffin it is made of a pine box, and a cushion (definitely no mattresses here). I can sleep pretty well on it if you discount the once a night crippling panic attack when I wake up staring at the side of the chair & think I've been buried alive. Plus, I've learned from my American roommate that our host mom was paralyzed last year, and still paying off massive medical bills from that time. So at least the money from hosting me is going to someone who really needs it. And as you can see from the picture, I pretty much have my own little forest going on by the window. That's kind of cool too.

Plus, this is one of my roommates.

He love sleeping on my computer, which is pretty much where I find him every day when I come home. He's one of her two cats, and they're both very sweet. This one has crazy eyes because he has glaucoma. When I sit across from him to do homework, I like to swing my pen in his face and let him try to catch it with his paws. I call it Kitty Physical Therapy since in my mind I'm helping him improve his eyesight, but really I just like poking the cat with my pen.

*This is also grounds for a really awesome joke to play on someone in Russia who is uptight and just learning Russian. Ask them to go to the store for you to buy jam. Tell them the word for jam is preservatif, like in preserves. Watch the hilarity.