I'm in Astrakhan' now and i'm starting to get into a rhythm finally! After we left DC is was constant travel and no sleep. We had a two day orienatation in St. Petersburg and also had free time. I met up with some friends and we went to a theme park on kryestovskoye island. I got sick on the way to russia so a russian woman suggested i get activated charcoal at a pharmacy, which i did. no big, i've eaten charcoal! haha! it helped too! they are these little black tablets and you're supposed to eat one for every 10 kg you weigh so i ate six and it turned my tounge black. on saturday, we had to leave the hotel at 3:30 am to fly to astrakhan' so i just went out with some friends who are from st. petersburg and didn't go to bed. it was a long day of travel needless to say. we flew out of st. petersburg at 6 to moscow. we flew from moscow to volgograd and got to volgograd at 11ish in the morning and then we found out our luggage didn't make it...so then we drove 8 hours to astrakhan'. (the astrakhan' airport was closed for repairs.) finally in astrakhan' i rested and did nothing until monday when we started classes. since then, we've had class everyday and last night we went to the theater to hear a philharmonic concert, which was nice.
my family is great! they're wonderful and take such good care of me. there's a mom and a dad (but he's never around), an uncle, and a son who's 25 named ramil'. they're kazakh but their ancestors have lived in Astrakhan' for centuries. (the city is over 500 years old). they are constantly feeding me until i feel like i'm gonna explode! i typically eat two dinners every night. last night, i had 3. my host mom thinks i'm about to die of malnutrition and so every spare moment she's putting food in front of me. and if i'm insistent about not eating (which you have to be in russia, it's costumary to offer things pretty aggressively three times) then she tells me to drink some tea. i drink on average 7 cups a day. if i'm not engaged in consuming some sort of edible substance, my host mom worries. haha! and ramil' tells me where not to go and how to not get into trouble and he takes me to university and picks me up everyday, so they're more than what i could have asked for.
the city is ok. it's like any russian city outside moscow and st. petersburg, meaning you have to renounce any level of convience or comfort you might expect! Astrakhan' is a very old city and was settled my mongols. there's tons of different nationalities and religions here, for expamle my family. culturally they are muslim but ramil' says he's atheist. it's a very diverse city. there's even a buddhist monastery here, in addition to tons of orthodox cathedrals and monasteries. aside from the culture, the city is incredible hot! ugh! it's just like texas! i thought i'd be escaping the heat but it's in the 90's and unforgivabley sunny every day. and in russia, it's strange for adults to wear shorts, so it's suggested we wear pants or jeans and NO sandals. one girl on our trip tried to wear shorts and her host mom wouldn't let her go to class wearing them and made her change! and there's thousands of these little flies and mosquitoes everywhere! you can't escape them! but in two more weeks they'll all be dead everyone tells me. the area around astrakhan' is flat for miles and miles and miles. it looks exactly like what you'd think the stepes would look like. we also saw the kremlin in astrakhan' the other day. in almost every old russian city there's a kremlin in the center of town. kremlin (кремль) just means fortress and theres always a cathedral and other churches and monasteries and government buildings inside. the center of town is really nice with shops and stuff. this weekend we're going to a town called altynzhar to be introduced into kazakh culture and food! it'll be awesome! so unitl then!
до скорого!
Росс