Sometimes I wish my job could be to be paid to write about experiences like this.  Can I have a research grant to acquire (or at least seek out) the русская душа?

Mariya wrote about how, when packing, she’s not just packing “stuffs” (as she puts in her cute English), but memories and moments from time here… and I honestly think this has something to do with how long I took to pack last night - I’m sure I could have done it in less time and maybe gone to bed before the sunrise, but I much rather preferred watching a Russian classic “Москва слезам не верит” while collecting the pieces of my life here and trying to fit them in an order that temporarily makes sense.

              The Belgorod sunrise as I went to bed…

Packing also meant saying goodbye to some people…

And so many things about saying goodbye - there comes a point when you realize there’s literally nothing you can do about it.  I stood there realizing that hugging a person one more time won’t change the fact that you may never see them again, that you’re leaving and don’t know when or if you’ll return and see their face.  

It’s like the picture that never focuses and comes out fuzzy - the figures of a face, but not the twinkling blue eyes or the creases of a smile or the sound of a voice.  

But at some point, you have to get on the train, and now a glass window separates you, leaving you with only the option of staring at what you’re leaving behind in the face until the wheels turn and faces are replaced with silver rails and birch trees and the coming golden leaves of summer speckled throughout the green.

It’s a Thursday afternoon and my last class ended - I make my way to Rodina, the central bus stop, and catch the #41 bus to the Central Market.  People used to simply walk across the street but now a new perexod means I cross underground, passing a babushka sitting on the ground with some green onions on a newspaper and a musician with her friends pestering passersby for rubles on their way.  I climb the stairs to the sunlight on the other side and walk along past the convenience store to the Torgovaya Palata, the Chamber of Commerce.  It’s already well past five, so the working day is over and most employees are gone, but I open the door anyway under the scrutiny of the security guard at his stand, whose face cracks instantly into a sort of excited smile, greeting the American who slips out a “Здравствуйте” and a smile in return, like always.  I go down the hall and find Ira in her office, always ready with a lesson somehow.  Most of the time there’s a song, often accompanied by a memory or a history lesson, other times a poem to broaden (or substantiate) my Russian soul, but always  the challenge to learn and speak and listen and know more.  It’s here that I learned the song for Den Pobedi that played in every metro station on that day in Moscow, as well as the song that played on my last bus ride in Belgorod - the one about a home that stood no longer, the one with windows facing the garden.  Somehow Ira also managed to get me on the volleyball court under the guise of our “English day” lesson, and unfortunately for her teammates, they needed me as the 6th player in their game that day.  Beyond the embarrassment of being the one who more often ducks away from or finger flicks the ball rather than spiking it, Ira had a way of subtly putting challenges in front of me that I knew were always better to tackle than not… no excuse not to learn how to properly volley (friends from home - watch out! I am now 40% more likely to hit the ball!), no explaining difficult concepts in English on “Russian day”, no reason not to translate a blog post made up of mostly slang and actually learn how to say the same in Russian.  

Somehow she always had the patience to decipher my caricature-like descriptions of life that sounded like a kaleidescope version of her mother tongue, and not only understand them, but teach me how to speak less kaleidescope.  Other challenges (homework!) were just valuable no matter what language they were in - plans for the next 5 years, writing out life principles I want to live by, and applying Einstein quotes to everyday life.  It was with Ira that I finally realized how much I love the Russian connection to the “лес”, and saif hello to summer this year with the familiar taste of a Babushka-gathered strawberry dipped in sugar.  I only met her 3 months ago, and never would have thought I’d learn so much, but then - I should have known - how much the Russian soul can give.  

And so, those times of “English day” and “Russian day” are over, I’m moving on to new chapters, but there are people and moments that one doesn’t forget - not only because of the memories that are made, but also because of the parts of you that changed through them…

Итак, спасибо тебе, Ирочка, что ты есть - я очень рада, что мы познакомились!

So, tonight I am wasting my sleeping hours watching the Eurovision competition live online, which is being held this year in Baku, Azerbaijan (which looks ever more the travel destination with its lovely advertisements between every. song… but, seriously, it does look amazing)… I don’t know why I keep watching it when I could be sleeping - it’s kind of like a combination of some actually semi-almost-normal numbers mixed with Lady Gaga costume competitions, disco crazy, and Cirque du Soleil.  And at the same time, it’s also like a Country-level “American Idol” with the hosting tradition of the Olympics all rolled into one… so, yeah, I guess it is kind of fascinating.  Anyway, so that’s the “fan” part of my post - not sure if I personally have become a fan, or if I’m just referring to the #eurovision twitter feed that has been entertaining me during the show.  

Oh, you want to know the failure part of my post?  I naively bought a package of frozen chicken today without looking too closely.  The lady was putting them in a case and I just asked for one before she put it inside, pretty happy that it was already sectioned off into pieces that would work for shashlik for a picnic tomorrow.  How handy.  I left it out to thaw all day and then opened the package to marinade tomorrow.  What’s this? These little “pieces” looked oddly NOT like regular chicken meat.  In fact, they all looked exactly the same shape.  I now realized that instead of meat, I had bought a very stuffed package of some kind of Chicken parts, which I most certainly did not grow up eating and would NOT work for shashlik tomorrow.  Finally actually reading the label on the package, going to google translate for a quick/horrifying reveal… and now I have a ziplock full of frozen chicken gizzards in my freezer.  Yum.

So, as I’m assuming many Russian cities have this tradition, last week some of my friends from English Club (including my roommate, Britta) took advantage of the free late night museum special… now, before you get too excited and conjure up images like this:

let’s not get too carried away.  Still, what I thought would be a bit of a monotonous showcase of Belgorod region farming tools from old times past, I was pleasantly surprised by the quaint little museum we visited around 10:30 pm.  In an American movie fantasy night at the museum, Ben Stiller gets chased by a T-Rex that comes alive.  In Russian Museum Night, it’s a little less crazy, but we were delighted to find the old woman being super cheerful, offering us tea, doing activities with kids/us like flower making and weaving, teaching us old Soviet (or even earlier?) games and songs, and rewarding us with cookies.  So… our night at the museum looked a little more like this:

      Being “The Merchant’s Wife” by Boris Kustodiev

      Gotta have a samovar…

      How many ways can you tie a babushka scarf contest…

      Weaving children’s game…

     Classic Russkaya pose…

So it’s not Robin Williams impersonating Teddy Roosevelt on a horse, but - not bad, eh?