I'm almost done with my summer here! It's very weird. I'm excited to go home for sure and go back to Baylor, but I'm gonna miss Russia too. Last Tuesday our group was invited to a mosque in town and toured around there. A man from Egypt who prays there showed us around and talked to us about the history of the mosque and of Islam in Russia. The people who make up the mosque are mostly Tatars. I haven't really managed to find out who the Tatars are. I think they're decended from Mongols, but I'm really fascinated by them. They're one of the major Muslim groups in Russia and mostly live in the south. Their capital is the city of Kazan southeast of Moscow.

After the mosque we were invited over to the Imam's house for tea. The Imam is the equivalent of a Muslim pastor. He leads all the prayers and therefore is a really good singer. His house was one of the old wooden houses that are all over Astrakhan'. My host family says a lot of them are almost 200 years old. They set us up in the dining room and filled us with these Tatar fried pastries filled with beef and tea and cookies and the best cake i've ever had in my life. It's made from honey and almonds. The Imam sang a prayer for us to listen to and it was beautiful. I had no idea what he was saying because it was in Arabic, but it sounded nice. All the Muslims in the room sang with the Imam when he sang "Alla-u akbar"--"God is great," and then afterward everyone ate a pinch of salt. It was really interesting because I know virtually nothing about Islam, and our hosts seemed really excited to have us over since there's a lot of tension right now between America and the Muslim world.

Last Wednesday I went over the my friend Maksim's house with my host brother Ramil' for Maksim's birthday. Maksim lives outside the city in a subburb of Astrakhan', but when I say subburb don't think of pickett finces and school buses...I mean cows in the middle of the road, houses that are a hundred years old, and everyone grows their own vegetables and has chickens in their back yard. His house backs up to the Volga so after dinner we went fishing and I've never experienced so many mosquitoes in my whole life. I didn't know that many mosquitoes were possible in one area. Needless to say, we didn't stay out long before we went back inside.

That weekend I got sick which was no fun but I'm starting to feel better now. Good ol' activated charcoal...seriously, it's my new favorite medicine. I'm buying a bunch and bringing it back with me to the States. Nevertheless, I still went over to Maksim's again with Ramil and his cousin Marad over and went fishing again but this time very early in the morning. We stayed out all morning and fished and swam and played rugby in the water. It was so much fun! I didn't wear any sunscreen so I got pretty burned. Maybe now I won't reflect the sun, however...

Sunday I went to the church near my university and ran into a girl in a program there, so that was nice! Afterward I just went home and then that afternoon I went out into the city with my host family and bought some souvineers for some of yall. ;)

This week's our last week of school and today we had exams all day. Tonight we're having a goodbye dinner. We have to sing and dance...haha! oh well! This weekend we're going to a place called a baz-otdykha. it's where you go to relax and be in nature. It should be pretty cool because we get to go on row boats into the delta of the Volga and maybe see the Caspian. It'll be nice. After that we fly to St. Petersburg and spend two days there and then back to America! This will probably be my last entry while i'm in Russia, so I'll write a post trip entry and upload pictures when I get home. Hope you've enjoyed reading all these! See many of you soon!