Russian Lessons

A day at Mary's Russian language and Ukrainian culture school:

Wake up and have an amazing breakfast prepared by a wonderful grandma. Practice telling the grandma how amazing the cooking is and various food related words. (Very important.)

One person puts the food away and washes the dishes while everyone sits at the table conjugating verbs. It is very fun. The verbs will be used later in the day; you had better remember them!

Peak in the fridge and realize that there is no more персик juice. Better run to the store! If you can remember the word for ice cream you can get that too. Or just say что это and point and someone will tell you how to say it. 

On the bus practice reading advertisements. 

As you are out and about, Mary will suddenly say "What is that word?!" and you get to read a word you will understand. Or she will say "Listen!" and you get to hear a phase you know. Or she will repeat a phase and wait for comprehension. 

The ladies in the bazaar love to talk to you, so buying things is very necessary for language development. You can make lots of friends! They might even say you are so pretty they thought you were Ukrainian. 

The afternoon is the time for advanced Russian lessons. If you are less advanced you can attend however and get a jump start. This is important as Mary has a Seven Time rule. You need to be able to remember and use something after the seventh time she has taught it to you. Fortunately Mary's genius students learn by the third or fourth time so she rarely has to go to extreme measures. These usually involve object lessons that are calculated to make an impression, involving headscarves, cucumbers, and more. 

In the evening are Grant's lessons. They are funny to listen to because people get giggly at night and Grant has a funny vocabulary. Things like любимые другs, would you like to be stung by a bee, and things related to traps. 

Mary will stay to all hours if people want to learn Russian. So your dreams will even be filled with Russian. 

Why You Need a Mr. Nate

Why you need a Mr. Nate in your life: for many reasons, but we can't cover them all, so here some. 

1. Constant supply of milk and black currant juice and candy

2. He leaves soap, towels, toothpaste, olives and juice

3. He doesn't need an interpreter because he speaks everyone's language-...😃

4. He even interprets for those Americans who don't understand. (:D) 

5. He makes your life longer because you laugh so much

6. He comes up with games from the trash

7. He helps you remember words like хорошо = horror show = fine. Or "как" (how) - a Ukrainian Indian. 

8. He gives medicine and vitamins to all the children every morning...these medicines taste strangely like candy...

9. He has everything you need: including a chisel, trowel and bug spray. Unfortunately, he forgot his washboard, "I picked it up to put it in my suitcase...but I decided no" 

10. Every morning after he left the camp, Inna would come and hug Haley and cry "Meestyerrr Nait! 

11. He plays uno endlessly, making everyone happy

12. Mr. Nate teaches English with Skittles--and his students actually learn English. 

13. He has the most accurate melon sniffing nose 

Host-Family Life

We made a dish that Larissa liked so much, she bought the ingredients for Haley to make it again. 

We made salad, chicken and strawberry shortcake desert with the cream we whipped and cookies instead of shortcake :)

Anton said "do you eat this every day in America? Or just holidays? I will come to America if you make this every day!" 

Dennis asked Larissa how much the ambulance cost, she leaned back and just laughed at him, as if she would never tell. Then she said :) 

Strange Noises

Today Mary, Lydia and Dennis were sleeping in the room. Mary heard Lydia make a snorting snore sound and she tried not to laugh...Lydia heard this sound in the middle of the dream 

Lydia in Russian "I need to wash my dishes" (instead of hands" 

Haley, "How do you say tomorrow?" 

Mary, "zavtra" 

Haley, "How do you say tomorrow?!" 

Mary, "zavtrak"

Haley, "Does that mean that today (syevodnya) also has it's own breakfast?" 

:)))) Hahahahahha

Mary doesn't know the difference between hair salon and bakery...

"I'm going to the hair salon." 

"Why?"

"For bread..of course"

Someone handed money to Lydia and asked her to pass it forward, along with the name of the bus stop. She passed the money to Mary with a mumble...! 

We are driving ourselves crazy to find a bakery, which we know is less than a mile away. We've spent 3 hours looking for it...it's almost as if it has disappeared. This is our life without Mr. Nate. 

We eat so much food every day...we buy as much ice cream as we want, peach juice - liters every day, fresh peaches, raspberries, strawberries, plums, nectarines...and cookies :) lots of cookies:)))

"We had already been here for a week and I was totally used to having a foreign language around me...it was a total new realization of being in a different country when I heard someone talking to their dog..I guess I assumed they would at least talk to their dog in English" 

"Вы хотите сок? Вы хотите молоко" - Haley 

This morning we snuckily cleaned the kitchen while Larissa was out. Whenever Anatolik came in we would set our scrubbers down. :D 

Our New Grandpa

Anatolik - our new grandpa, who we always accidentally call Anton

Every time he answers the door, he has a huge smile and he says "please! Come in!" 

Once, when we flooded the whole bathroom, he made us clean the whole bathroom. While we were cleaning, he cut a pipe in the kitchen and was yelling at our Grandma to get out :) 

One morning, Anton brought Lydia a подарок - "Cold!!!" And he smiled a humongous smile, as he handed her a huge bottle of compote:):) (compote is boiled fruit drink with sugar)

One day we bought ice cream (every day), and we asked him if he wants some. He said "I will!" Larissa said "well...if this is a treat, then of course" 

Soap

When we were washing dishes, this lady came up and tried to convince us that we needed to wash dishes without soap because she believes that our soap makes children sick and is very harmful. 

Then she brought us soap from Michigan to prove that our soap was bad because 1. It had a bad smell and 2. Bad taste. Her soap was safe for even drinking and came in concentrate to save money and you could even give your pigs the dish water to drink with this soap. she took a dish and rubbed it - and it didn't squeak, then she used her soap and it squeaked. She even had toothpaste from this company, which she fed us. There was only one problem with her soap, she wasn't willing to give us any. But somehow this proved we shouldn't wash with soap.

Church

On Sunday we went to the Catholic church. It was a cathedral and a Bishop and three priests were concelebrating Mass. The church was very echoey so Mary had a hard interpreting. However, the liturgy was the same format so we could still follow along. The singing was beautiful. Some of the tunes were even the same. Mary could understand the song numbers so we were able to follow along in the hymn book. 

Incense was used and during communion pattens were used. Communion was only in one form. At the end of Mass, the litany of the saints was said. 

This afternoon, we went to Maksim's church. Mary was able to interpret some of that, the text was Acts 27. After the sermon and discussion, we talked and ate chocolates. Little Dasha was at church. Mary decided to not eat a chocolate right away. Oh dear! Dasha and her friend sat and ate them all, one after another.