Лёд

Ice is everywhere.  On the streets, on the sidewalks, on the trees, on the cars, in my freezer.  It migrates.  A few days ago before our little heat wave, ice was concentrated on my eyelashes, in my hair, in my scarf - a testament to how moist our breathe really is.  Now that temperatures have shot back up to hover around 0 (C: Fahrenheit is becoming more and more difficult the longer I stay here) every sidewalk here in Pushchino is coated with at least 2 inches of ice.  The smart people skate where they need to.  The rest of us gently move slowly along, holding our core, ready to instantly correct the smallest imbalance that would send us tumbling.  Wondering if it was a genetic thing that Russians seem to move so effortlessly, without the faintest sign of mishap, it was educational, if incredibly alarming, that R----- and I were able to help a fallen babushka to her feet a few days ago.  I have slipped and fallen only once, and R------- still holds an unbroken record with her unbroken bones (and yes, I did knock on wood so no worries.)  Yes, Russians deal with their cold, but it isn't as if they are a superhuman race immune to harm by cold or frost.  In the most recent freeze 45 Russians were killed in one week.  Spikes that you slip on over the bottom of your boots are quite popular here, especially in the elderly population of пенсионеры.  A slip for them is much more costly.

Which brings me to another point.  I have a guest!  Fresh off the plane from the sunny state of Florida, she brought her smile, 35 pounds of presents from mostly my Mom (but also some other wonderful people: Thank you!!), loads of sweaters, boots, warm tights, warmer leggings, and to top it all off, a nice little SMS sent in advance saying she forgot her coat.  So we are still in the process of finding a second coat for her, fortunately for me it has been warm enough to wear my New Haven approved peacoat, so  is more of an amusement than an actual problem.  There is a certain feeling of accomplishment when I think about the fact that I actually managed to have a visitor.  Probably because logistics when it comes to Russian anything tend to be not very straight forward.  The question of whether or not we would be getting a driver from the institute extended up to much less than 12 hours before my departure, the lack finally there of resulted in a 5 stage journey to get to Sheremetyevo, and I would like to venture that some signs on the 3rd floor [departures] indicating where the arrivals are [1st floor] would be helpful.  Also, sometimes it is useful to have elevators that go between the 3rd, 2nd, and 1st floor, and not just some random arrangement of two of the aforementioned levels.  And I think we all lost count of how many blanks we went through before we finally got the registration right.  But all worked out and the first few days of my break have been spent sleeping, cooking, eating, seeing friends and introducing them to a pretty awesome American friend, and finally something I have been waiting to do for so long.

READING!!!  When I came to Russia, I figured that I would force myself as best I could to read only in Russian, watch only Russian TV, and basically immerse myself as completely in the language as is possible so that I could improve as quickly as possible.  However, sometimes when one tries too hard to fight one's nature, one comes up with some very unsatisfactory results.  Yes, I have many times attempted to pick up a book in Russian and snuggle down to read after work in the evenings.  But when you have to translate so often, reading ceases to become a joyful exercise, and instead becomes a task.  Your brain cannot unwind, if anything it starts working faster to make sense of what is happening.  And so what has resulted is the stark absence of any reading whatsoever.  But with the Christmas gift of 8 books, all in English (like I said...35 pounds of presents), and one of which is Gone With the Wind, I have many many wonderful pages ahead of me.  And I think I am also founding the library for all future residents of my apartment, so I hope that they can read English.  Or maybe I will hand them off to students when I leave.  But for now they are all mine to anticipate, and devour.

Moving back even further, Christmas here was full of tree decorating, cookies, pies, tea, friends, sparks [my apartment is an electrical nightmare], It's A Wonderful Life, long extension cords at waist height running through the kitchen to keep your refrigerator running since it's circuit burnt out, and lots of ice cream that needed to be eaten before it melted.  After class (which consisted of the previously noted movie, much tea and food, and a really lovely gift from my students [beautiful silver earrings and bracelet, and an even lovelier box with the wish that someday I will meet a man who is smart, handsome, and rich enough to fill the box with diamonds]), 6 fun, funny, energetic, and interesting people helped me to decorate my tree and eat things in my apartment.  As a woman at church said today, Pushchino is made up of many дружелюбный (friend-loving/friendly) people and fairly frequently I have chances to just be and be struck by how much of a gift it is that I got the chance to be here this year to meet these people.  Christmas was one of these moments.

Christmas trees here are priced by the centimeter.  Most Russians don't get their trees until right before New Year's, so I was actually very lucky to be able to buy one of the first real trees that appeared at the market the day before Christmas.  The seller was curious why I wanted one so early, and I explained that actually, I wanted it for "Catholic Christmas" instead of New Year's, which meant I was already cutting it very close by American standards.