Part of my weekend homework included writing a fairytale (this came about because during class I read the Russian version of Goldie Locks and the Three Bears, so there is some logic to this assignment). And did I ever have fun with this assignment. The story went a little something like this (because I know you’re all just dying to know, though I’ll give you the shorten version for time’s sake) – long ago there was a village of squirrels, who lived together quietly and peacefully. On day, after a storm (I added this for dramatic flare- I’m no amateur) Magical Sasha came to the Squirrel Town. She was very beautiful and wonderful, and they all loved her immediately. And since Sasha had a very big butt, all the squirrels immediately wanted big butts as well (the Russian word for butt is pronounced ‘popa’ which only adds to the greatness of my story). But sadly, their diet consisted only of fruits and vegetables, so this was very hard to achieve. A few squirrels tried really hard to get big butts (named Ilija and Nikita, but they’re stock characters so no worries) but were stupid and therefore, unsuccessful. But one squirrel named Pasha was very intelligent, and knew that many animals had very large butts. The best thing to do, he thought, was to find the animals with the biggest butts and ask them for help. And naturally, he went to go find the whales. He found out from the whales that they actually don’t eat fish, they eat nuts instead (where they get these nuts remains untold, again for dramatic effect). So Pasha went back to Squirrel Town, eating nuts the whole way. And when he finally returned, he had the biggest butt of them all. Magical Sasha saw this, and immediately fell in love with him. So from then on, all squirrels eat only nuts, because who doesn’t want a big butt? (FYI- the main inspiration for this story lies in my favorite random fact about Russian language, that when the word for protein is in the genitive case, the becomes the same as the word for squirrel, which I discovered after noticing that my yogurt included 2.7 grams of squirrel, or so said my dictionary)
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, and my teachers loved it too. This is probably why I now have to write a small fairy tale every night for homework. I’m working on creating a Pasha-Sasha-bad guy love triangle tonight, and if you’re interested, I’ll let you know how it goes. So basically, learning Russian is going pretty well (as if you couldn’t tell from that amazing English translation of my work) and I’m glad to saying I’m enjoying it a lot more than the other languages I’ve studied. It’s naturally very hard, but unlike other people (cough French people cough), Russians all seem really excited that people want to learn Russian and are sometimes even helpful. Well, everyone except Vlad, who is pretty sure I still don’t even know how to say my name, but that’s another story entirely).
When I wasn’t busy writing prodigious fairy tales weekend, I managed to stay pretty busy. We visited a crystal factory about an hour away on Friday, which was really interesting but also very Russian (read extremely rundown and dirty with underpaid and greatly unprotected employees). Then we celebrated a birthday in the evening and experienced Vladimir’s incredible nightclubs (also a story for later… and I thought they dressed badly at school…). Saturday Amanda (my inspiration for Magical Sasha) and her friends from Moscow and I went back to Suzdal to see more of the cutest town ever. And Sunday the group celebrated Easter a little early by cooking a great American feast, full of potato salad, green beans, and chocolate chip cookies among other things. It was incredible, and I ate so much I had to unbutton my pants (this is probably more a result of almost three months of Russian food, but you get the point). My only interesting running stories included almost getting tapped in the butt by a rather drunk Russian and then 5 minutes later getting attached by snowballs and chased by some boys (lovely country huh). Otherwise, my burgeoning career as a storyteller continues…

the pictures are of suzdal and the beautiful blue-domed church, and at the cafe in vladimir (can you tell what kind of drink everyone is toasting?!)