Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! Sorry it’s a day late, but I’m still reeling from one of the most awkward Valentine’s Day celebrations in recent history. School was fine, and I opted out of the gym because of a certain lingering illness, so I was all excited about a dinner party and movie at my tutor Katja’s dorm. She called me a few days ago saying it would be her and some friends, and an English subtitled movie, so it sounded very safe. But by her and a few friends, she apparently meant (and this is where the language barrier must fail me) her, her boyfriend, and another equally affectionate couple. Being the fifth wheel is even more fun when they speak Russian the entire time (I think Katja got a little tired of translating, because after about ten minutes, I was completely lost). So we’re all just hanging out, I’m sitting there awkwardly trying to make small talk while Katja begins cooking, when all of a sudden the lights go out (this is clearly a very common occurrence in Russia). This, however, works in my favor for a while since in the dark, no one can tell how incredibly awkward I feel. Then however, we found candles and decide to start on our salads, since we were all hungry and couldn’t cook the rest of the food without electricity. I had suspected Katja was skirting around the issue of there being meat in the salad, and when I felt a fish bone in my mouth, it seemed to be a sign. So I nibbled around at the rest of the salad, eating all the beets I could find (and if you know how much I love beets, you can imagine how good the rest of the salad was).
So there we are, having finished our salads, still in the dark of course, and have toasted to just about everything we could think of (Russians are very particular about their toasts, and there are too many rules to even name). But luckily, Katja had planed this cute game where you draw a card out of a box and have to do whatever it says. Naturally though, this being Valentine’s Day, they were romantically themed. The first card requested everyone to tell how they met their significant other. It was cute, especially when you hear the story from both sides and they fight over little details and then decide the best way to tell the story is to make-out instead. The next card was to tell your significant other how much you loved them as if you were a cat. Also extremely cute and with excessive making-out afterward. The next card brought about an exciting game that Katja loves to play, called the compliment game. So each couple goes back in forth complimenting each other (and boy, did they have some strange ones) until well, thankfully someone got tired of all the cuteness. I don’t remember the last card, probably because at this point my soul was dying inside from all the cuteness engulfing me.
After some more talking about love and cuddling with each other and some heavy petting and whatever else they could think of to make me feel great, the lights finally came on. We ate big balls of dough and other strange Russian concoctions, along with more wine and toasts (the third toast, for example, if always to love and you have to drink your entire class… I passed, and am probably cursed for the rest of my life). As soon as dinner was over, and the heavy petting had resumed, I excused myself saying that my family would worry. So after almost four hours, I escaped the cave of love and general grossness just in time to miss out on the showing of “A Lot Like Love.” I’m sure the rest of them were too busy making out to see much of the movie though.
I hope most of you had a day filled with much, much, much less awkwardness than yours truly.

here are some new pictures of Vladimir and my stalker-like picture taking