I'm gonna work backward on this one because i'm starting to forget everything since my last entry. So, yesterday was awesome! my family took me into the country and we had a picnic by the river all day. We left in the morning around 10 and drove for an hour or an hour and a half and had to cross the river on a ferry boat with our cars and then drove through a field and parked on the river bank. we set out blankets and cooked shashlik (russian shishkabobs) for lunch and we swam in the river. we played volleyball and soccer and swam some more. we fished and then grilled shashlik again. and just relaxed until about 7 and then drove back home. at one point i fell asleep on the blankets and woke up and had forgotten where I was. It was a really cool sensation. The whole day was really perfect and relaxing. I want to bring this tradition home with me.
Saturday our group drove 4 hours east to this autonomous republic called Kalmykia. Kalmyks are actually Mongols left over from the invasions in the thirteenth century and so they're Buddhist. It was so crazy because all the archicture in the capital was east asian and the people looked east asian, but they were speaking Russian and all the signs were in Russian. It was great! The city was so nice and clean and the roads weren't torn up and the central park was beautiful! There was also a Buddhist temple there that we went to. It's the largest Buddhist temple in Europe and it was beautiful! I've never been to a Buddhist temple before and go figure my first one is in russia! Inside there was this huge statue Buddha and benches and incese is burning and there's this chanting music playing in the background. It was really peaceful. The temple had like 7 floors but normal people are only allowed on the first two, which actually take up like 70% of the temple. The top 5 are reserved for monks and the top floor i think is reserved only for the Dalai Lhama. Anyway, it was really interesting. Then we went to the City of Chess. Yes, a city devoted entirely to the game of Chess. However, the museum was 800 rubles per person which is like 32 dollars which is outrageous for here, so we used the toilet/hole in the ground with walls and left. The drive was really nice because it was through the steppe and there is nothing for miles and miles. i'm talking, maybe a bush and some cows. I think it's beautiful.
Friday I went to the beach on the Volga with my friend Maksim and these two girls, Anna and Lyena. That was really great! I'm really enjoying my time here now. It's been difficult, but now that I've figured out the place and the people and am making friends, I really love it here. It's such an interesting culture. There a huge Muslim influence and then a huge Orthodox Christian influence and a lot of communist influence, but I feel like Russia is more influenced by Islam and Orthodoxy than communism.
Last week we went on a tour of the religious buildings of Astrakhan'. We saw three Orthodox churches, a mosque and a Catholic Cathedral. That was for sure interesting. Tomorrow we're going to a big mosque and having a Tatar dinner at the mosque. Tatars are muslim people i think of either Turkic or Mongol decent, and their food is delicious, so i'm excited. Last weekend we had the whole weekend off and my host brother and his girlfriend and I walked around the city.
I've only got 2 weeks left in Astrakhan' and i'm excited to go home, but I'm also sad. I like it here and I'm going to miss my host family. Hopefully I'll have more time to write this week. I won't miss school, that's for sure...I'm so tired of it.