April Showers Bring the End of Classes

Our last full month in Volgograd was pretty exciting counting sown the days to our big trip to St. Petersburg and for me a visit from my parents!! But before the trip we had to finish up classes. Because Ashlin was leaving right from Petersburg we arranged to finish our exams before we left on the 29^th. However in true Russian style we weren’t really told anything about our exams so we just kinda went about our business as usual. We had class like normal. Our grammar teacher continued to be horrible and the rest of our teachers were pretty great. We did participate in a writing competition where we had to write a page or so on one of the topics given to us. I chose to write about my first trip to Russian in 2007. It was pretty easy especially after having our culture teacher proof read it. Also in true Russian style we were asked to participate in a concert for the Olympiada. Why they wanted to do a concert is news to me but without any choice we had to participate. I sang a Russian song and Anna and Ashlin read a poem in Russian. The concert went pretty well and we were even given certificates for participating in the writing competition. I got first place! (Along with about 20 other people) but still pretty exciting!

The other exciting thing about the Olympiada concert was that it took a day away from our last week of classes. With our free Thursday and Friday classes cancelled because of some Chinese exhibition, we only had two days of classes in the final week of April. We assumed that we would have exams those two days but we ended up not having any exams at all. I’m pretty sure our grammar teacher didn’t even know it was our last week of classes. Needless to say it was the easiest semester I’ve ever had.

Aside from little to no classes, April was pretty much the same as every other month here. It started to get really warm really quickly at the beginning on the month. So we Americans brought out our shorts and t-shirts early on the in the month. We were baffeled that even in 70 and 80 degree weather Russians were still walking around in jackets and hats. We learned from our culture teacher that Russians dress for the time of year and not the actual weather. So even in the heat where I was sweating in shorts and a t-shirt the Russians were wearing pants, jackets, scarves and hats. Towards the end of the month they started to dress more appropriately for the weather.

We also started going to the open-air market every weekend. We even made friends with the guy who sells dried fruits. He even gave us discounts on the dried apricots that we bought. We even bought the food for our Easter meal (mac and cheese and hotdog casserole) from the market. The market is one of the only places you can buy white eggs in Volgograd, it is the cheapest place to buy eggs as well. We dyed eggs with Joy and Linda, it was the first time either of them had dyed eggs and they turned our pretty well. This year we celebrated Easter twice because the Russian Orthodox Church calendar is a week later than ours. For Russian Easter they still dye eggs but the main food associated with their Easter is called kulich. It is a bread type muffin usually made in a coffee can or something of that shape. They are delicious and I had about 5 of them throughout the week. On Russian Easter Sunday we walked around the center of the city and happened on an outdoor Easter service. It was really interesting to listen to the Russian prayers and see all of the priests dressed up in orange robes for the occasion.

The rest of our time in April was spent hanging out with our few friends in cafes and walking around town. We even when to the first soccer game of the Volgograd team Rotor. It gave us a chance to see inside the stadium that from the outside looks very much like it should be condemned. And even though it still works as a stadium, they are going to need to do some major upgrading before the World Cup comes to the city in 2018. Another plus of the game was that they won even though they are one of the worst teams in the league.

Another day of class was taken up by a field trip to a small town on the Don River where the famous writer Michail Sholokhov lived. We drove four hours to this town that was little more than a village and spent about three hours there and then drove four hours back. It was interesting to see a small Russian town but other than they nice scenery it wasn’t really that great of a field trip.

With the end of classes and April, we were off to Petersburg on our 36 hour train ride.