Февраль: more commonly known as February

February being a short month didn’t bring too many events for us. We settled into classes fairly well although our new grammar teacher is terrible. She’s about 100 years old and will ask us questions and then talk right over us when we try to answer. She also had a tendency to make fun of us in front of our faces when she talks with other teachers. It’s frustrating but we make do. Our other classes are going well.

Our one big event for the month was going to the banya for Masha’s birthday. The banya is like a bathhouse but you have to make sure you go to the right one. Apparently some of the cheaper ones are actually fronts for prostitutes. Luckily we went to the right one and we even had our own private rooms with two types of saunas, Turkish and Russian, and two pools. It was so much fun. We spent about three hours there and it was a very nice respite from the freezing cold seeing as it didn’t really get above 25 for all of February. We even did the Russian thing and beat each other with the twigs in saunas it actually felt kinda cool.

Anna and Ashlin in the Banya

Me and Ashlin in the Banya

Me and Anna in the Banya

Anna and Masha

Ashlin, me, and Masha

Other than that we pretty much just hung out in the dorms or a cafe to get away from the cold and try and stay warm. While we were hanging out in our favorite café one day we were speaking English and this guy turned around and started talking to us and as I was expecting Russian to come out of his mouth I did not understand the first few words he said. As it turns out it was just English with an Irish accent. It was a very pleasant surprise to find someone else who speaks English and, as it turns out, someone who lives in the dorm right next to us.

In February we also attempted to celebrate Maslenitsa. It’s a holiday that’s supposed to be about winter ending soon and you celebrate by eating blini a lot. Unfortunately we didn’t have much luck finding any festivals or anything firstly because its mostly a family holiday and, secondly, cause it was freezing. So we just made blini on our own and stuffed our faces it was pretty delicious. The one festival we thought we found was actually a cleverly disguised concert to garner support for Putin for the elections on March 4^th.

The cleverly disguised rally

For me the second half of February was focused on learning my music for my trip to Ireland with the choir at the beginning of March.