Suzdal и Bogolubova

June 29, 2007

Once again the Russian busses are packed and difficult to board, ride, and pay for the ride. There are so many commuters heading the same way that it becomes a 20 minute sauna with 50 people who do little talking and mostly staring straight ahead of themselves! I went on the bus all by myself! I am finding out how to be a stern Russian in public. A product of 75 years of Soviet life!

Our daily language lessons are beginning to bring back some of the headway I had made into the Russian language three years ago! However, there are some inconsistencies I have found. Maybe I missed something before, but the small m that I remember making an mmmm sound for has now somehow changed into the ‘t’ sound. Some of the ‘g’ sounds are substituted with a ‘v’ sound. But that is the only problem so far.

Sometimes I think of American food and drink too much and I miss it much too much at this point. Fantasizing about a tall glass of iced tea with plenty of ice just frustrates me even more. I bought Nestea little mixes for a small bottle of water. DO NOT…. I repeat DO NOT under any circumstances mix one of those with a bottle of water that says ‘mineral’ water (carbonated). Yes, I made a small mess at my seat today at lunch. I did manage to have some fairly interesting tea. No ice, but tea flavored, partly carbonated brown drink. I’ll be working on that situation.

Another class on Russian crafts was very interesting. Dolls, jewelry, scarves, towels, porelain, and more were shared.

We took the bus to Suzdal, an historic city with 120 churches! There were many monasteries as
well. Most of the churches date back to the 12th century. We heard a quintet of men sing in one of the churches. The acoustics were amazing. I think we better get rid of all the carpets and seats at GSPC and install stone as soon as possible. I also saw a man play 20 bells all at once in the top of one of the churches. It had an interesting sound. In Suzdal we had a very good lunch with salad, blini stuffed with fish, soup, pelmenie (sp?) and black tea. It was the best lunch yet! The market square offered 30 vendors or so, some things actually of interest. But I still haven’t bought anything yet. I had my fill of those ‘Russian’ things three years ago. I am a more conservative souvenir hunter now! We also visited a Wooden House Museum which was a small community of all sorts of houses made of wood representing every style in Russia. There were also two wooden Russian churches on the grounds. All the buildings had been deconstructed carefully, brought to this site, and reconstructed exactly as it had been before. Way cool!

We also visited Bogolubova a town with two more 12th century churches. One, the Church of the Intercession was at the end of a mile hike through the fields and walkways. We had quite a sight going and also when we arrived. The cube style of architecture using limestone was BIG in the 12th century!

After returning to my flat, my host family gathered their things, called a taxi, and headed for their dacha for the rest of the weekend. Their dacha, as it turned out, was a comfy little cabin sitting on approximately a quarter of an acre. It has two stories, a porch for sitting and a porch to keep fire wood dry. The grounds are filled with flowers, strawberries, fruit trees, and vegetables. Two friends from Moscow joined us, Anna and Genya. Anna spoke English so it was enjoyable to talk about her job in an American pharmaceutical firm in Moscow. We ate, drank vodka, grilled chicken and pork, and had a grand time. Apparently we had TOO good of a time and our English attracted some young (we’ll call them) “hotheads” who wanted to ‘gawk’ at the American curiosity. We were able to discuss some things with them. When I gave them the topic of Bush and the Iraq war, thinking that we could all agree that war is bad and the American president has gone way over the line in international affairs, they could not speak about it and had no opinion. I was disappointed that I did not get the reaction I thought I would get. They left without fanfare and some shaking of hands. They did not impress any of us and one could tell that they made the Moscow folks a bit uneasy! Again I did not realize what time it was and I went to bed a little before 2:00AM!