The People

I was talking to Bethany on the phone today and she asked me what my favorite part of Russia has been. The answer was easy. For me, its definately been the people. Not only the Russians who live here, but all the people I've met, and the friends I've made have been awesome. Aside from the engineering majors on the trip, there are Russian Language majors. They live with some host families while us engineers live in the hotel. Every now and then, they come out to the hotel to visit us.

Hearing about the host families and the way they do things have been both hilarious and amazingly interesting. Two of them live with pretty normal families. But the others I've heard about sound ridiculous. One of the guys lives with just a Baboshka. He can never hang out with us late at night because he has a curfew and needs to be home by 9 every night. You don't argue with the Baboshka's here. Another one of the guys lives with a family with another boy around his age, parents, and of course, a Baboshka. He tells me that everyone works or goes to school, but he's never seen them do either of these things. At night, they just disappear aparently. Baboshka works too, but no one knows where. He got yelled at for wearing an undershirt, because they said its too hot. Its not unusaul for it to be 110+ degrees. Another guy, lives with two dads, both of which are married, but he hasn't seen neither of their wives. They took him on a camping trip today, he thought they were just going fishing. On the way back, they decided to stop at another fishing spot, but he said he was tired and slept in the car. Then two prostitutes came by and wanted to do prostitute stuff. 1 in 6 people have HIV here. He made the right decision. One of the girls lives with an 18 year old volleyball player/model. So basically, her host mom is her host sister, who is younger than her (she just turned 21).

The other night, about 7 or 8 of us Americans walked around Volgograd. We met up with one of the guys' host brother's friends, about 10+ of them. So there were about 20 of us just walking around Volgograd at night. There were fireworks and stuff because highschool graduation was the same night. We sat down in an outside resturaunt and talked for about an hour. We put 3 tables together, and as I looked around, I realized how amazing it was. There we were, Americans and Russians alike sitting down together just talking, laughing and having a good time. The Russian majors translated, but some things just didn't need to be. We're not all that different after all.